- India
- Saudi Arabia
- UAE
- None of these
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Ukraine was the world’s largest importer of major conventional arms in 2023 . This distinction, detailed in SIPRI’s report “Trends in International Arms Transfers, 2023,” is a direct consequence of the massive military aid provided to Ukraine following the full-scale invasion by Russia in February 2022 .
While SIPRI typically analyzes arms transfer data in five-year intervals to smooth out annual fluctuations, its 2023 report explicitly noted that in the single year of 2023, Ukraine was “by some distance the world’s largest arms importer” . At least 30 states supplied major weapons to Ukraine during 2022 and 2023, almost exclusively as military aid . The primary suppliers to Ukraine were the United States, accounting for 39% of its imports, followed by Germany (14%) and Poland (13%) .
It is important to distinguish this 2023 single-year data from the five-year trends also published by SIPRI. For the five-year period of 2019–2023, Ukraine ranked as the fourth largest arms importer globally, behind India, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar . This broader view captures the longer-term dynamics of the global arms trade, where established importers in Asia and the Middle East typically dominate. For instance, in the 2019–23 period, India was the world’s top importer, with a 9.8% share of global arms imports, followed by Saudi Arabia (8.4%) and Qatar (7.6%) .
The surge in Ukraine’s imports is part of a larger trend of increased arms transfers to Europe. The report found that European arms imports overall nearly doubled (increasing by 94%) between 2014–18 and 2019–23, largely driven by the war in Ukraine and heightened tensions with Russia . This contrasts with a marginal 3.3% decrease in the global volume of international arms transfers during the same comparison period .
In summary, while India remained the largest importer over the full five-year span from 2019 to 2023, the extraordinary circumstances of the conflict in Europe made Ukraine the world’s foremost arms importer for the single year of 2023.
